Maple Leaf Rag

Everyone recognizes this as a Jeep; the more inveterate spotters among us will call it an M38, the military version of the CJ-3A built by Willys-Overland. The eagle-eyed will suspect that the maple leaf flag has some significance and well it does. This a Canadian Jeep, designated M38-CDN, built for the armed forces of Canada. It is also a Ford Jeep.

"Hold on!" you say. "Ford built Jeeps, yes, but that was during World War II." Indeed so. The US Army first selected a "Truck, Utility, 1/4 ton 4x4" designed by Karl Probst for the American Bantam Car Company. But when American Bantam had insufficient capacity to meet government orders, the main contract was let to Willys-Overland, a contender in the original competition. Later, Ford Motor Company, also a contender, was brought in, and for most of the war near-identical designs were built as the Willys MB and the Ford GPW. It's interesting to look at Ford's entry in the Army's "Jeep competition". Called the "Pygmy," it was powered by a 9N tractor engine and used many other off-the-shelf Ford components, particularly in the interior. This Pygmy was photographed at Hershey a number of years ago.

This M38-CDN Jeep was indeed built by Ford - assembled by Ford Motor Company of Canada in Windsor, Ontario. Ford of Canada put together 2,135 M38-CDNs between February and November 1952. Some interesting facts about the M38-CDN can be found at the M38 page on the Jeep Web Ring. I snapped the M38-CDN at Hershey 2003. It was billed as "motor redone," but the rest of the restoration was not for the faint-hearted.

Magnetic Personality

For all its popularity as an automobile powerplant, the internal combustion engine has one basic flaw: it develops its maximum power and torque in a relatively narrow band of engine speeds - and no power at all when it's not rotating. Making the engine useful in a car requires multiple ratios of gears, belts or disks, each of which has drawbacks. Thus the automobile did not become a true consumer good until the advent of the modern automatic transmission.

Justus B. Entz had a solution to this problem as long ago as 1897. In that year he invented an electromagnetic transmission, in some ways similar to the drive mechanism used on today's diesel-electric locomotives. An internal combustion engine drives a generator, and the electricity generated powers an electric motor to drive the wheels. Entz's transmission was put into production in the Owen Magnetic, "The Car of a Thousand Speeds," introduced at the New York Auto Show in January 1915. Built by the Baker, Rauch & Lang Co. from 1915-21, it was produced in factories at New York, Cleveland, Ohio, and Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.

The late Edwin Jameson, Sr., apparently thought this was a good idea, for in 1918 he purchased a new Owen Magnetic touring car. In fact, he thought it was such a good idea that he bought two: the tourer, seen here with Dale Wells (left) and Leroy Cole, both past presidents of the Society of Automotive Historians, and also a roadster. Dale and Leroy were entranced with the Floyd Clymer-style through-the-windshield spotlight with which this car is fitted. Driving an Owen was truly a one-foot adventure.

Both cars, which had remained in the Jameson family, were sold at a Bonhams and Butterfields auction at the Larz Anderson Auto Museum in Brookline, Massachusetts, in May 2003. The tourer, knocked down at $36,000 (plus buyer's premium), is now being restored by a British owner. The roadster, which sold for $24,000 plus-premium, went to an undisclosed location. Interestingly, the Entz transmission itself ended up in England after the demise of the Owen Magnetic. Ensign Motors, Ltd. of London adopted it for a model of their British Ensign car, sold as the Crown Magnetic (later Crown Ensign) from 1921-23 (photo thanks to Mike Worthington-Williams).

Where's Walter?

If you have puzzled your way through the Where's Waldo books you know how Wayne Graefen felt. He had come to California to buy a Plymouth, and he was feeling like the child looking for Martin Handford's cheeky little bespectacled gent. All he could see was a huge heap of ivy. In tribute to Walter P. Chrysler, he exclaimed "Where's Walter?"

After an hour's work, Wayne and his friend Press Kale, along with seller Cal Moxley, had the Plymouth out in daylight. Seeing, at long last, a rare 1932 PB convertible sedan, Wayne renewed his committment to buy it. Consummation merely awaited disposition of the Pontiac, Packard and GMC truck in front of it, as well as another Pontiac and two Cadillacs, so it could be moved.

The car has since emigrated to Wayne's Texas home, and restoration awaits. Plymouth's convertible sedan was not as popular (690 built) as Ford's equivalent B400 (41 fours and 842 V8s), nor as well known today. It is not, however, as obscure as the similar 1930 Sun Sedan built both as a Hudson and an Essex.

Perhaps surprisingly, after too much time outdoors the Plymouth is in remarkably good shape, the seats almost comfortable for sitting. Wayne reports, however, that the ivy had obscured the car's true gender; "Walter" has since been re-christened "Ivy la Deuce."

High Fashion Volvo

Some of us consider old cars to be legitimate lawn sculpture, although spouses and neighbors tend to disagree. A few merchants, however, appreciate the attention-getting properties of cars, like this "clothes horse" Volvo in front of the Fat Hat Factory in Quechee, Vermont.

At first glance I considered this Volvo, the station wagon version of the PV544 series, to be a 545 (since the wagon equivalent of the earlier PV444 was a 445). As in all life, the truth is more complicated. According to "Professor Volvo" Duncan LaBay of the Round Fender Register, a harbor for fanciers of pre-perpendicular Volvos, this style, introduced in the autumn of 1960, is known as a P210 - for reasons known only to some long-gone Swedish product planners. The wagons were known as "Duetts" in Sweden, because of their dual purpose (passengers and cargo) nature.

Duncan says that some 95,000 Duetts of all descriptions were built, but only a few were imported to the US. The P210 was built until 1969, and the last ones to come to America, 1968-9, were imported privately.

The Fat Hat car is well known to the Round Fender crowd, having been restored in Sweden in the early 1980s and privately imported to Virginia. It has been serving display duty on Route 4 in Vermont for about fifteen years, and the rust planted by Vermont winters is quietly working its deadly magic.

Interestingly, the Duett, a better-cosseted example of which is in a New England collection, shares with the fiberglass-bodied P1900 Volvo Sport (rear view) the distinction of being the only postwar Volvo passenger cars with body-on-frame construction.